So it seems that that thing where a story doesn't properly move up the update queue happened again yesterday. If you missed yesterday's chapter, go ahead and click that back button.
In other news: Longer chapter today! Hooray!
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Chapter 29: Rooms
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It turned out that there weren't beds in the room. There was a bed. Luckily, there was more than one such room, strung out like beads on the walkway. There were enough beds if people doubled or tripled up, and the beds were more than big enough to do that.
The problem was that that required splitting up. Going to different rooms. Some people objected to that. Others thought that wasn't so bad, except that some of the rooms were a bit... odd. Themed. At least, that was what Sam had heard. She hadn't looked at them herself. Neither she nor Tucker were at all inclined to leave Danny passed out on his own.
Neither was Jazz, but, when it came down to it, Lancer wasn't capable of managing the class by himself under these circumstances, and Jack just added to the chaos. Jazz was needed.
The room that Sam and Tucker had claimed for themselves and Danny wasn't so bad. Really, it was normal, when taken in context. All the furniture in it was made of stone, grown from the walls. There was a huge, archway window, showcasing a full moon and brilliant stars. The vaulted ceiling was... Not painted. Inlaid. There were circles of blue, silver, and gold on the ceiling. They reminded Sam of old star charts, although they didn't match to anything that she could recall.
The bed itself, positioned under the window, was wide. Larger than king-sized. There were lots of cushions and blankets on it, and between that and the slight depression in the middle, it had a nest-like feel to it.
There was a desk with drawers up against one wall. Against another, there was a dresser. The bed was flanked by nightstands. The door was flanked by bookshelves.
The desk and each nightstand had a ball of cold, green-blue fire floating over it. Tucker and Sam had discovered entirely by accident (Tucker certainly hadn't meant to stick his elbow through the one over the desk) that the balls could be moved around and dimmed or brightened by touching them. Not that this was in useful at the moment. The wisps more than adequately illuminated the room, and they adjusted their brightness at a whim.
Only a handful of the books on the bookshelves were in English. The nightstand drawers contained tissue boxes (tissues optional) and a large amount of string. There were pencils, pens, and notebooks in the desk. The dresser was full of clean clothes in various states of wear, all approximately Danny's size, none of which Sam recognized as ever having belonged to Danny, and a large number of mismatched socks.
"Found it," said Tucker, softly.
Sam turned away from the dresser. Tucker was on his knees, looking under the bed. Danny was on top of the bed, face down, his feet hanging off the end, dead to the world. More so than usual.
Sam glanced back at the doorway, towards where Danny's parents were standing. Arguing. Jumping up and down and tearing their hair out. Well, not quite. It sounded like the main thrust of the argument had changed from 'Do we sleep in the ghost beds?' to 'Who gets which ghost bed?' with a little bit of 'I don't want to share my ghost bed!' on the side.
If it bothered them so much they should just sleep on the sofa.
Sam sighed, even as Tucker's hand twitched towards whatever it was that he had found under the bed. "Wait," she said.
"I know," said Tucker. His eyes were on the door as well.
Couldn't they pick somewhere else to argue over something so shallow? There was a sleeping person in here!
Tucker stood up, frowning. "Maybe we should get his shoes off, at least," he said, looking at Danny. "Turn him over, too. He doesn't look very comfortable."
Danny didn't look very comfortable. It almost looked like he was planking, to be honest, just laying there where he had fallen on the bed. Sam had expected him to move. To get into a better position. To burrow under the nearby sheets. That's what he normally did, when he was falling asleep.
"Have you ever seen him just collapse like this?" asked Sam. "I mean, going from being tired but talking, and doing stuff, to can't even stand up in minutes?
"Yeah," said Tucker, biting his lip. "Not often, but yeah."
"When?" They were both sitting on the bed, now, on either side of Danny.
"When he's been hurt. After long fights at night. Just once or twice. I think he'd been trying to get home, but the fight was near my house and he needed help getting patched up. A few minutes after I got everything in place he just kinda passed out in my bed. I freaked out. I thought that he was dead. But he was still breathing and stuff, and he was 'fine' when he woke up. So." Tucker shrugged.
Sam scoffed. "Yeah, Danny and his fine. Ready to flip him?"
"Yeah," said Tucker.
Strictly speaking, they didn't need to coordinate like this. Each of them had, on separate occasions, carried Danny on their own. Not to mention the times that they had flung Danny across an entire room, again, on their own. Danny was light, even when he wasn't subconsciously tapping into the power of flight and was (literally) dead weight. Flipping him together, though, was easier on Danny. Like this, they wouldn't be putting too much pressure on any one part of him, and accidentally injuring him further.
It also mitigated the risk that Danny would wake up, react poorly to being touched, and try to hit them, or something. Not that it had happened more than once, but it paid to be wary when your friend has both superpowers and terrible nightmares.
However, all that happened was that Danny made a tiny sound of protest, not unlike that of a kitten, twitched, and went right on sleeping. Only now, he was on his back.
"He's not purring," observed Sam, still keeping her voice low.
"Yeah, I noticed that. Do you think that it's just that he's uncomfortable, or upset, 'cause I know that I'd be, or that one of those things damaged his core?"
"It could be either," said Sam. "But he was purring earlier, so it wasn't the gun."
"He was asleep earlier?"
"Yeah, we all got split up in the trees."
"Does it have anything to do with the Mortifier being gone?"
"Yeah. I guess you could say that." Sam started to give Tucker a brief rundown of what had happened as they each untied one of Danny's shoes.
By the time they were done with that Jazz had (finally) gotten the others to move on to the other rooms. Sam made one last check of the doorway, peeking out to see where everyone was, before turning and nodding to Tucker. Tucker reached under the bed, and pulled out a first-aid kit.
Sam and Tucker had known that there would be a first-aid kit somewhere in here, especially after seeing how much stuff was in the kitchen. Not because they were psychic, or anything like that, but because they knew Danny, and Danny always kept a first-aid kit in his room, or any room he planned on sleeping in. For him they were a necessity. There was one in his desk in his room. Tucker kept one under his bed. Sam hid hers behind her stereo. Jazz had one, too, in plain sight on her bookshelf, labeled 'in case of ghost attack.' Anything labeled like that in the Fenton house was usually left alone, strangely enough.
Tucker snapped open the case. "Hey, Sam, check this out."
"What?" asked Sam, peering over his shoulder.
"This is one of ours," said Tucker, pointing to the words 'red/green' written on the inside of the lid with markers of the same color. "I think this is the one we lost a few months ago. The one that fell out of the speeder, remember?"
"Yeah," said Sam. "That's weird. I wonder how it got up here." She frowned, then shook her head, standing. "Just make sure that it's all still okay to use. You take care of Danny, I'm going to make sure that nobody sneaks up on us."
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There was a torch-lit room full of velvety black flowers. The walls were draped with black curtains. The walls and their ornaments had a decidedly Gothic flair to them. The bed had four posts and a black satin canopy. No one wanted to sleep in that room.
There was a room that was painted in warm colors. After the all the cool stone, it was a bit of a shock. It was incongruous. A bit artificial, too. After all, the paint was applied directly to the stone. The blankets on the bed were stripped. Green, yellow, red. There was a desk, dresser, bookshelves, bedside tables... The bedside tables had lamps on them, each sporting a single, bare, incandescent bulb. Sitting on the desk was a rectangular sheet of glass, with a sticky note on it. The note read: 'Electronics still beyond me, sorry.' Piled around that piece of glass were piled batteries, remote controls, electronic key fobs, little, tamagotchi-type hand held games. The bookshelves were full of broken electronics.
There was a room that looked almost normal, except that there were books everywhere. Bookshelves covered every wall, all the way up to the ceiling. There was even a bookshelf built into the base of the bed (the covers of which were a tasteful teal). Most of the books were in English, but some were in Esperanto. It looked like someone had tried to organize them according to the Dewey Decimal system, but had given up halfway.
There was a room that had a distinct 'princess' theme to it. Pinks and pale blues, and medieval architecture, complete with tapestries and murals depicting knights and dragons. This was one of the more normal rooms, except that once you looked more closely, the dragons were winning.
There was a room that was completely frigid, all the furniture made of ice, not stone, snowdrifts piled in the corners.
There was a room that had even more clocks in it that the first. The walls were decorated with gears and cogs. Instead of bedside tables, there were sundials to either side of the bed. Stripped candles were arrayed along the desks and tables.
There was a room that looked much like the first room, except that there was also a skateboard propped in one corner, and instead of clocks on the walls, there were photographs and postcards.
There was a room made up to look like a forest.
There was a room that, instead of an actual bed, there was bed, and instead of furniture, there were chew toys.
There was a room that looked like it would better belong in Ancient Greece.
There was a room that was full of pictures of cheese. But no actual cheese. Just pictures. The upholstery was red velvet.
The rooms were weird. But, once Jazz realized what, or rather who they were for, they started to make a lot more sense. This was Danny, after all. Of course he'd make guest rooms for his friends, and of course he'd try and make them as personalized as possible. Of course he'd go overboard.
Poor Danny.
She hoped that he wouldn't mind that she wasn't sleeping in her own room, but in Sam's.
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Maddie, accompanied by Mr Lancer, walked back into the larger, communal room. Mr Lancer had come out because he was going to sleep in the sitting area. Maddie, who was planning on staying awake, and taking the first watch, was coming out for an entirely different reason.
She walked into the kitchen. It was such an odd thing to find in a ghost's lair. A ghost shouldn't need a kitchen. A ghost shouldn't need food. Especially not human food, which was what the kitchen was stocked with.
Maddie spread her hands out over the counter, feeling the cool, smooth stone. It felt remarkably real. All of this did. She pushed down against the stone. There was no give to it. This was disturbing in the extreme. Ectoplasmic constructs should not feel so real.
There was the possibility that portions of this environment were constructed from real objects. Materials from the real world. From Earth. The food at least, had to be. But that possibility was frightening, to say the least. That a ghost could move this much material...
Then the question was, why? Why would a ghost go through this much trouble?
The only answer that Maddie could come up with, is that the ghost, that Phantom, wanted humans there.
They were here now.
Maddie was not at all inclined to let Phantom get away with his plan. It involved deceiving and indoctrinating her children, and possessing her son.
(Part of her wondered if he was telling the truth at all, if Danny was telling the truth, but she ignored it. It couldn't be.)
But she'd had no choice but to go along with what he wanted. She was unarmed, and this was Phantom's home. If the incident in the forest had taught her anything, it was that an attack here could come from anywhere.
So she had waited until the small ghosts were all distracted in the other rooms. Phantom could communicate with them, and she had no doubt that they would report her movements to him, if they saw her. That made it awfully dark in the kitchen, though. Luckily, she did have night-vision features in her goggles.
She glanced at Mr Lancer. The poor teacher was already sprawled out, unconscious on the couch. Maddie sighed, and began to search.
It took several minutes to find what she was looking for, made longer by the need to be quiet relative to whatever was going on by the bedrooms (She hadn't heard any screams, so it was fine. Probably.), but she had at last found them. A block of knives. Not the best weapon against a ghost, but better than nothing at all, and if they were made of ghost material, then they should be able to cut a ghost even if it became intangible.
She set the block on top of the counter, and grasped one of the handles. A butcher's knife slid out easily, smoothly, with a notable 'ting' as it left the block. Maddie examined the edge. It looked sharp.
"What are you doing?"
Maddie whirled, taking in the figure that had come up behind her so quietly. Stark white hair, dark clothes with white accents, luminous toxic green eyes.
Phantom.
Maddie buried the knife in his shoulder.
